This week in our Members Only Newsletter you missed:
Max Notes on the gamification of our elections.
The Tuesday Top Five news articles everyone should be reading.
An original essay from News Beat’s Rashed Mian on the “Genocide Election.”
And “Not for Nothing” on the end of the Mets ‘24, Smile 2 and Trump’s fast food gig.
So I guess the question is…what are you waiting for? Sign up today to become a member and level up to unlock a slew of additional perks!
Max Notes
I read an article this week in a publication that I haven’t read in years. The story is of personal interest to me so I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the headline pop up on a social feed. Sometimes we get locked in our newsholes so it’s nice to get a wider sample.
By the second paragraph it was immediately apparent that it was written by AI. The repetition, use of nebulous phrases, piss poor architecture. To be clear, in my day job we utilize AI tools to help with tasks from coding and cleaning up spreadsheets to content mapping and creation. (Lest you think I’m throwing stones in a glass house.) But this example was so laughable and obvious it got me thinking about the amount of news articles from “trusted” sources that are generated or enhanced by AI. So I asked ChatGPT:
“The use of AI in journalism has grown rapidly, with estimates suggesting hundreds of thousands of news articles being written or assisted by AI tools each month. Generative AI is transforming newsrooms, allowing media organizations to automate routine reporting, such as sports recaps or financial summaries, while also providing tools for content recommendations and audience engagement. However, this shift introduces challenges, particularly regarding trust, accuracy, and public perception of AI-generated news. Media leaders are focused on leveraging AI responsibly to maintain credibility and adapt to the evolving landscape of digital journalism.”
If ChatGPT knows anything, I suppose it’s this. I have to question the last sentence, however. Are media leaders really focused on responsible AI? My friends at the publication that shall remain nameless certainly don’t seem preoccupied with it.
This isn’t breaking news. Garbage in, garbage out. Most people are aware that the internet is feeding us garbage that is compacted and distributed through social media. We’re a nation of headline readers and post likers. But I am floored by the speed and volume the garbage is being produced. Be careful out there.
“The difference in outcomes among the early group of colleges was revealing and seemed to confirm the importance of race-neutral policies aimed at increasing diversity. In June 2023, a few weeks before the ruling was handed down, Duke announced an ambitious new financial aid program and recruitment initiative for low-income students from the Carolinas; the University of Virginia did the same for state residents in December.”
Headlines
Pick Your Own Predictor
Election anxiety is peaking and armchair experts (present company included) are weighing in with their preferred methodologies. We’ve covered the predictions from pollsters, pundits and the eerily accurate long-standing predictions from Allan Lichtman and his “keys” to the White House. Here’s another take from Al Jazeera that looks at the historic success of the S&P 500 (20 out of 24). Caveats abound in this one, but it’s another model that predicts a Harris victory if that helps you sleep.
From the article:
“With less than two weeks until the election, the S&P 500 is up a healthy 11.8 percent since early August. Assuming US stocks do not take a dramatic tumble in the final days of the campaign, the historical trend clearly favours Harris.”
A global declaration formed in April of this year aims to significantly reduce plastic production and disposal as part of a larger effort to hit the 1.5 degree IPCC targets. Delegates from across the globe will gather to agree on a path to reduce plastic waste from 49 million metric tons to 7 million by 2040.
From the article:
“The plastic pollution problem is also interlinked with climate change. If plastics were a country, it would be the fifth-highest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter in the world. The vast majority of plastic-related emissions occur during the production process, so if production continues to rise, the emissions will also increase. From 2019 to 2050, GHG emissions from plastic production could amount to a quarter of the planet’s remaining carbon budget – the maximum carbon that can be released into the atmosphere before global warming reaches 1.5°C and its catastrophic consequences.”
The Supreme Court may have opened a door to eliminating the last bit of union protections that exist by delegitimizing the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which has already seen a dilution of its powers under this court.
From the article:
“This was the logic that the Supreme Court applied to the Securities and Exchange Commission in last term’s SEC v Jarkesy, which hobbled the power of the agency’s administrative law judges to levy fines. So, in some respects, the high court is already inviting a challenge to all similarly structured federal agencies, including the NLRB. But the Court’s first inclination may be to chip away at the labor board’s power, while the activist Right will keep trying to seize the opportunity to nullify the existence of the country’s main enforcer of workers’ rights.”
This week we focus on a thin slice of the energy pie to disabuse the notion of “energy independence.” When politicians reference this concept they speak narrowly in terms of oil and gas production in the United States. As though if we could somehow pump enough of our own oil specifically, we could break our dependence on foreign nations, especially those villainous bad actors like Russia and Iran. Not only is this talking point an illusion, the framing of it is completely false. For starters, we already pump more oil than we consume. Moreover, we import crude and refined oil from allies.
Here’s a snippet from the pod:
Max: “The Biden/Harris administration has routinely touted the fact that there are 9,000 open licenses on federal land that oil and gas companies have yet to utilize. This is absolutely true. There’s nothing the government is doing right now to impede the extraction or production of oil and gas from land in the continental United States or immediately offshore. Technological breakthroughs in horizontal drilling and detection of proven reserves has made the current operations vastly more efficient than they used to be, thereby making it inefficient and costly to start up a new operation. There simply isn’t any need to do so.”
“Today on the show, two stories of building power in swing states: from the top down, and the bottom up. First, how a future Supreme Court justice helped launch a program to challenge voters at the Arizona polls in the early 1960s, in a county that’s become a hotbed for election conspiracies in the decades since. Then, how a 1973 labor strike led by Arab Americans in a Michigan factory town sparked a political movement that could play a major role in the 2024 election.”
“In Talking to My Daughter About the Economy, activist Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s former finance minister and the author of the international bestseller Adults in the Room, pens a series of letters to his young daughter, educating her about the business, politics, and corruption of world economics.”
“The leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas are dead, in large part thanks to the unblinking support and supply of weapons from America. The same weapons deployed in battle, killing over 40,000 civilians in less than a year. We are, yet again, the assholes who did nothing to make it better. How many enemies did we make by allowing a genocide of children? No statements or promises to help rebuild. Instead, mainstream media is plastering the drone video and a photo of his body in rubble.”
The Democracy Now! co-founder is among the most consequential journalists of this era, having built a robust and independent digital outlet that airs dissident opinions and holds power to account.
“iAmerica is the national immigrant justice campaign platform of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) created to offer informational tools and interactive opportunities for immigrants and their families in America to become full participants in our nation’s democracy. We are proud to advocate, defend, and fight for the rights of all American families by uniting, strengthening, and activating our civic and democratic participation to inspire real change.”
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